Along Came a Spider Read Free

before he’d even reached her. I grinned for a moment, imagining the kind of hell Nate was catching, then turned back to the victim. The dead man was a Tale—the auralike impression Tales could sense in one another still hovered around him, although it was growing faint. I analyzed the blurring edges. He’d been dead only about an hour.
Damn, Nate was fast.
I squatted down in front of the victim and carefully lifted his suit jacket, looking for a wallet or some other form of identification, but he’d been stripped of anything that could make my job easy.
Figures.
I braced my elbows on my thighs and took a deep breath, preparing for what came next. The man’s eyes were wide open, glazed over with that faraway gaze that was unique to the dead. Swallowing my nerves and pushing my fear aside, I locked onto his gaze and felt the connection taking hold.
Now for the fun part.
In seconds, I was drifting into the dead man’s psyche, latching on to the last impressions seared into his memory before his light had been snuffed out.
The images came fast and furious: Tingling on his tongue as the Cristal slipped past his lips. Euphoria and arousal. Blurred faces of two women—grotesque and surreal, like reflections in fun house
mirrors—pawing at his clothing, pushing him down onto the bed, bright red fingernails clawing at his chest, then slipping past his waistband to roughly caress. Animalistic sounds of lovemaking and release. Then—just as he was collapsing into postcoital exhaustion—fangs plunging deep into his jugular, drawing out his blood with a snarl that reverberated through him, a persistent buzz vibrating just below his skin. He wanted to scratch, tear it out, but his limbs were paralyzed. He couldn’t move. The terror pumped adrenaline into his system in a fervid rush, making his heart pound furiously against his breast.
Panic rose up from the depth of his gut and he tried to scream, but no sound came. More fangs sank into his skin, drawing away his life one great pull at a time. He was drifting now, the images growing dark as death edged closer. He was cold, could no longer feel his toes, his fingertips, his legs. . . . As the shadows drew closer, an image came to him of a beautiful woman who moved with feline grace, and regret brought tears to his eyes. He felt a single warm tear slip from the corner of his eye and marked its path as it trickled across his temple and toward his ear. And then—
“Hey, Trish.”
I started so violently, I toppled over, ass-planting on the pavement. “Damn it, McCain!” I snapped, casting an irritated glance toward the Enforcer who’d interrupted my connection and stolen the dead man’s final image from me. “You can’t interrupt me when I’m reading the dead.”
“Ah, hell—I’m sorry,” he said, having the good grace to look contrite. “Go ahead and do what you need to do. I won’t say a word.”
“Won’t work,” I grumbled, pushing up to my feet and waving away his offer of help. “I only get one shot.” I brushed the dirty snow from the back of my coat and looked over at McCain, taking him in at a glance. Black male. Close-cropped hair. Brown eyes. Athletic build. Six feet two inches, two hundred twenty pounds of lean muscle. After nearly two years with the FMA, he was still considered the new guy. The kid was doing everything he possibly could to try to impress the higher-ups but hadn’t quite made the marks yet.
“Was there something you needed, McCain?” I asked, trying to be patient as he stood there, rocking a little on his heels.
He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets. “Red sent me. She thought maybe you’d like—”
I held up my hand, cutting him off. “Let me stop you right there, sparky, before you embarrass yourself,” I said, my tone a little pitying. “I’m not going out with you.”
He blinked at me. “What?”
I sighed. “Listen, I know Tess totally busts your balls and makes you nervous as hell, but I think you’re doing a